Thank You, Monty Sunshine!

Ronnie Bray

I have to blame Monty Sunshine. No, I didn’t make up that name - Monty Sunshine was the
clarinettist in Chris Barber’s Jazz Band. Nobody played clarinet like Monty played clarinet. The
clarinettist who painted melodies on the wind with his virtuoso playing entranced me so much
that I could listen to him for hours.

He so moved me that I had to become a clarinettist just like him. As Mrs Beeton would have
said, “First, get a clarinet!” Southbourne, in Hampshire, sported a large shop that sold items on
behalf of people and charged them a small commission. One day, whilst home on leave, I looked
in the huge window and saw a clarinet going cheap. I bought it and took it back to barracks in
Catterick, North Yorkshire, and began practising with my “Tune-a-Day” beginner’s manual.

My feeble attempts at divine melodies soon attracted the attention of a member of the band of the
4th/7th Royal Dragoon Guards. He looked at my clarinet, adjusted the reed, then put it to his lips
and blew whilst his fingers did things with the shiny metal tabs along its shiny black length. I
knew right then that there was nothing wrong with the instrument. It was me that couldn’t play
it. He offered to teach me to play and I accepted with indecent haste. However, when he
suggested payment I had to decline just as quickly. Army pay wasn’t too great and he was out of
my price league. He never spoke to me again.

Discouraged, but persistent, I kept up the practicing although I never got very far. I did manage
to squeeze a simple tune out of it that I thought would make a nice party piece. I had no plans
for an encore number, because I felt quite certain that I would not be asked for a further
performance.

I took the clarinet home on leave with me. Esmé and the children were staying with her parents
at Castlemaine Avenue at this time. My attempts to practice were not appreciated and I decided
that it would be diplomatic if I removed my activities to the shed at the bottom of the garden.
The shed was far enough away from the house to nullify the worst and most painful aspects of
my playing.

I assembled the clarinet, moistened the reed – I had seen others do that – then put it between my
lips, blew out my cheeks and pushed air past the reed into the wooden tube. Monty Sunshine
would have died. Not from joy or musical elation, but from pure shock-horror at the sound that
issued from the flared end. It was a high-pitched screech of such volume that, had the shed been
supplied with a crystal chandelier, it would have shattered into tiny fragments.

“Teething troubles.” I muttered to myself and prepared to make golden melodies. Another
shriek! This one seemed louder than the first. Then, with Titanic effort I really went for it,
knowing that it was only a matter of time before the noise turned into music. This screech
registered 9.5 on the Richter Scale and brought a man running out of a nearby house. He quickly
identified the locus of the noise and banging violently on the wooden wall of the shed demanded,

“Will you stop blowing that bloody whistle!” It was not a question.
I was shocked into silence. My bulbous cheeks returned to normal with a long sighing sound as
they let go of the week’s supply of air they held. My hands and arms collapsed limply in front of
me, in a gesture of resignation, and the clarinet fell forever silent. I stopped blowing the
‘whistle’ right there and then, and never took it up again.

I don’t listen to Trad Jazz any more. It is too painful. I have even forgotten Monty Sunshine’s
name. It just came into my mind the other day, and I don’t know why. It made me sad. Not sad
because I didn’t become as good as Monty Sunshine – few rose to his level - but sad because I
recognised the death of another fondly held dream, and sadder still that I had forgotten that I ever
had such a dream.

Of course, it was a lifetime ago. Yet, with the months and days galloping by, one’s mind is often
turned to yesterday and the bright promises of youth. It is one of the blessings of old age to be
able to turn back the pages of memory and see ourselves as we were then. It is one of the curses
of age to remember how many of our dreams and hopes lie broken, submerging in our wake like
cargo jettisoned from ship that has sprung a leak and must discharge some of its precious cargo
to remain afloat.

Do I remain saddened by remembrances of things past? Not very much. When my memory
backwards turns to those far-off days, I see more of sunshine, more of happy joyful faces, and
feel gratitude that as bad as it often was, there were many good and blessed moments scattered
among the heartbreak, and that honest tears shed for our disappointments will, in time, bring a
sweetness and peace to the soul that no amount of triumph could ever furnish.

And the clarinet; do I miss it? Clarinet, schmarinet! I have had better and more substantial
dreams that no amount of tumbling notes, no matter how they thrill the heart for the moment’s
pleasure, could equal. I have known, and do know, the gentle touch of love on my soul; felt, and
do feel, the love of innocent children; seen, and do see, blessings tumbling earthwards from my
gentle loving Father as he answers my unspoken prayers. Even Monty Sunshine couldn’t get
those out of a wooden tube.

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Copyright © August 2000

Ronnie Bray
All Rights reserved